According to researchers the Ross Sea will "be extensively
modified by future climate change" in the coming decades creating longer
periods of ice-free open water and affecting life cycles of all components of
the ecosystem in a paper published and funded by the National Science
Foundation (NSF). The researchers have drawn their information from the
Regional Ocean Modeling System, a computer model that evaluates sea-ice, ocean,
atmosphere and sea-shelf.

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While conceding that "predicting future changes in ecosystems is
challenging," the researchers note in a paper published in Geophysical
Research Letters, the changes predicted by the computer model have the
potential to create "significant but unpredictable impacts on the ocean's
most pristine ecosystem."

The wind and temperature changes, the authors note, will affect the
ecological balance at the base of the Antarctic food web--including changes in
distributions of algae, shrimp-like krill and Antarctic silverfish--which, in
turn, may be expected to cause disruptions in the upper portions of the food
web, including penguins, seals and whales, which depend on those species for
food.

A team of four researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine
Science (VIMS) at the College of William and Mary and the Center for Coastal
Physical Oceanography at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., jointly
authored the paper.

Walker O. Smith, Jr., a professor at VIMS and the lead author of the
study, said: "The model suggests that the substantial changes in the
physical setting of the Ross Sea will induce severe changes in the present food
web, changes that are driven by global climate change. Without a doubt the Ross
Sea 100 years from now will be a completely different system than we know
today."

The research was funded by the Polar Programs (awards: 0838948 and
0944254) and the Ocean Sciences divisions in NSF's Geosciences Directorate.

The U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) coordinates all U.S. research on the
Southernmost Continent and in the Southern Ocean as well as providing the
necessary logistical support for that science. NSF manages the USAP.

The researchers note that over the last 50 years the distribution and
extent of Antarctic sea ice, or ice that floats on the ocean surface, have
drastically changed. Among these changes are a documented decrease of sea ice
in the Bellingshausen-Amundsen sector, but an increase of sea ice in the Ross
Sea sector of Antarctica.